


to newer and wider conquests

by whitchry9



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blindness, Character Study, Gen, Hallucinations, Lovecraftian, POV Second Person, Personification, Stream of Consciousness, Suffering, Weirdness, charles bonnet syndrome, cosmic horror, even darker AU, it's just all around unsettling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your city is suffering, and even though you know there's nothing you can do about it, not in the long run, you know you have to try.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	to newer and wider conquests

**Author's Note:**

> “It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”  
> \- HP Lovecraft

The hallucinations started not long after you lost your vision. You didn't mention anything to your father, of course you didn't, because he had enough to worry about. You just figured it was something like the noises you heard at night when you tried to sleep. (You didn't mention your senses either, and since they probably go together, it just seemed like too much work to stress him out even more.)

 

After Stick (your life is divided into befores and afters these days, your blindness, your father, Stick) you know that they're not just an extension of your senses. He explained it as your mind inventing things now that it no longer can actually see. You're not sure if that's meant to be reassuring or not, because you don't find it to be. Because Stick has never seen, he doesn't have them. He just knows things.

(Sometimes you wonder why your brain comes up with all that fucked up stuff when it's bored and lonely, but you realize it's the same reason children create monsters out of shadows and noises they hear at night. Everyone creates the thing they dread.)

 

Most of the time it's not a problem. You're blind. No light perception, those are the words the doctors used, and you're not supposed to see anything.

But sometimes, you forget that things you see are not things that are there. Sometimes you don't want to remember. No matter how awful they are, sometimes the horrors your own mind creates are better than nothing at all.

 

But not many things can coexist with a world on fire, and every time you see something that you can't explain, you reason it away with that. Or you try to, sometimes. It doesn't always work.

 

It terrifies you though, the uncertainty. The dangling fear of _what if._ Because if you can't trust your senses, you have absolutely nothing. And that terrifies you more than the possibility of the things you're seeing being real.

 

Because you do worry that they are real. You worry that the world is filled with the horrors that your mind makes up. (You worry more that the things that are real are even worse.)

 

The things you see are awful mostly. (There was something nice, once or twice, but they were deceptive, trying to lure you in, and turned out to be the worst of the bunch.) There are faces with massive teeth and no eyes, jeering at you. Sometimes people appear and split into multiple copies of themselves, all heading towards you like they want to hurt you. Enormous monsters that you can't even see the entirety of, creatures that only ooze as movement, noises that can only come from horrible beasts but aren't even seen. You know they're not real, but that doesn't make you any less afraid.

 

It's after Stick leaves that you decide not to be afraid of anything.

(Feelings are overrated, you tell yourself. Including caring. So you don't. Or you try not to at least.)

 

* * *

 

You go to college, then law school in an attempt to make your father proud. You acquire a friend despite your best efforts to not care about anyone or anything, because caring means getting attached and attachments are weaknesses. That's what Stick always told you, although sometimes you wonder if that was a harsh truth about the world or if he was only preparing you for him to leave.

You can't know.

 

You study hard and ignore what Stick taught you, told you he was training you for. It almost works, until it doesn't.

You can't block out the little girl's cries any more.

And you hate to admit it, but you like the feeling of blood on your gloves. (It reminds you of the night your father died, and it brings you closer to him and reminds you you're disappointing him at the same time.)

 

But once you listen for the cries they never stop. There is so much suffering in your city, and there's no one out there doing anything about it.

So you do. You don a mask and wrap your fists and go out there almost every night. You follow the cries like a moth to a flame and like the moth, you often get burned. Bruises and cracked ribs are common, and it seems like you're never without cuts or scrapes. Your lying improves, and so does your fighting. (You try not to dwell on what that means.)

 

Somewhere underneath it all is the stirring of religion. You know what you're doing isn't right, but you can't bring yourself to believe it's wrong either.

So you cross yourself and tuck a rosary in your back pocket before you go out for the night, and promise yourself that you will go to confession that week.

(You don't. But the next week you do, and it's almost the same thing.)

 

Most of the time it feels like you're just swinging and hitting nothing but air, but your bruised knuckles and aching fists say different. It's just hard to see change when you can't see anything at all, and that might be a cop-out, but you count the same number of screams every night no matter how many men end up in hospital with broken bones, no matter how many people get delivered to the police with notes of their crimes.

 

It's quicksand, and you're doing all you can to stay afloat while everyone around you doesn't even notice what's happening.

(You don't blame them. You tried not to notice for the longest time, but then you've always been better at noticing things than everyone else.)

 

* * *

 

You know that it can't get any better because the world doesn't work like that, and you know you are only a very small flower in a very large garden- no, that's not a good metaphor, because your city is anything but a garden, but you can't think of anything better.

 

But it's not even just your city. It's the country and the world and the entire universe, however vast and expansive it may be. There is so much and none of it can be controlled, but you try, like catching smoke or herding butterflies, by god you try.

You're not sure what else to do. You just know you can't do nothing.

You tried doing that for so long, and it only made the things you saw, the hallucinations, worse. At least these days, they are fewer and farther between, and you think it's because you see real horrors, so your mind doesn't need to invent them. (You're pretty sure they're real anyway. If they're not, you don't really want anyone to tell you because you're certain you wouldn't be able to handle it on top of everything else.)

 

* * *

 

It becomes evident that there is a single person spearheading the campaign to destroy your city. He claims that he's trying to do what you do, but on a scale that matters, and you want to so vehemently oppose that statement that it nearly makes you sick. He wants to tear the city down and rebuild it, but things don't work like that. It's not the same city if you strip away everything that makes it.

You hate him and everything he stands for.

 

You'd like to imagine him as something inhuman, because you hate for your species to be associated with something as vile as him. It's almost reassuring that you can't see him, because then your mind has the opportunity to invent a monstrous form for him.

(You may be called the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, but you know who the real devil is around these parts.)

 

It's worse when you know that even the devil has people he loves, as if he were capable of such a thing. Monsters aren't monsters when you love them, you think. (You hope you're wrong though. Because if he isn't a monster, what is there left?)

Instead of thinking about it, you put your mask on and tape your fists and dive into the worst parts of the city to cleanse yourself with blood.

 

* * *

 

You know your city is sick. You knew it long before Wilson Fisk every stood in front of a camera and announced it to the world. (You knew it when you were nine years old and you saved a man at the cost of your own sight. You knew it when you were ten years old and you felt your father's face for the last time, his skin still warm and his blood still hot and sticky on your fingers. You couldn't wash it away for days it seemed like.) You knew it before he tells everyone. You hate that he takes the words from you and twists them like that.

 

And maybe you are the same, or at least a little bit, and any amount is more than you'd like, but there is one essential difference. You still have hope and he doesn't.

 

You're not sure why you've got hope, since honestly, if anyone has reason to not hope, it's you, but maybe that's the Catholicism talking again. Maybe you have to believe it can get better, because otherwise there's no point in trying.

But it probably can't.

You try not to think about it too much because it makes the monsters come back and your mind crawl all over itself in an attempt to scramble away from them.

But hope you do, because someone has to.

 

At night when you perch on rooftops and extend your senses for blocks, you can hear the city breathing around you. Not the people, the city itself. She's gasping, heaving for air under the weight of the crime and the pain and the suffering that she contains.

 

Some times, if you concentrate hard enough, you can feel that pain too, and it's enormous.

On those nights, everything you do you do for her, in an effort to ease that pain, even if only slightly. You know the value of getting even a tiny bit of respite, and you do your best for her.

(Even if, when it's all said and done, you feel it's hopeless because of the entropy in the universe. Everything always turns to chaos, and you can't help but wonder who are you to mess with the natural order of things. Who are you to play God.)

 

But other times, all you do is paint her streets with your blood as you limp back home, and you swear you can hear her urging you on, one step at a time.

 

You always make it.

(But you're sure that one day you won't. It'll be okay, because she'll wrap her arms around you and take you in as part of her, and there's no better way you can think of everything ending.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt can be found here: https://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=809685#cmt809685


End file.
